This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention that is recited in the claims. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description and claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Cellular radio antennas integrated in a printed wiring board PWB are well known. These integrated antennas have traditionally occupied a relatively large area of the overall PWB, making placement of other circuitry more challenging.
Also well known are cellular radio antennas that are made in or on a flexible substrate. These flex antennas were sometimes disposed directly along an interior surface of the radio housing or cover in order to leave maximum available space for the PWB and other radio components. To avoid inconsistent inductive coupling with a user's hand (for example where the antenna is within a mobile handset and the user may grip the housing differently at different times), these flex antennas were sometimes disposed on the surface of the PWB itself rather than along an inside surface of the radio housing. These flex antennas were coupled to the PWB via spring clips or other such non-permanent connectors in order to enable testing of these flex antennas prior to final assembly. Such connectors removably coupled the flex antenna to the radio engine on the PWB, and so final assembly of the flex antenna to the radio engine was by physically joining the removable connectors on both components to one another. See for example U.S. Pat. No. 7,289,069. To avoid inductive coupling with a user's hand and for other reasons, other flex layers bearing an antenna were embedded as an entire layer of a rigid PWB, but this approach creates problems for circuit designers who must route PWB signal pathways around or through the flexible layer which carries the antenna.
What is needed in the art is an antenna which does not so impair possibilities for engineers to place circuitry on the PWB and which also allows the designer a wide range of choices for positioning the antenna itself.